Arming The Schools
October 20, 2006
As the Associated Press reported the story, when a
13-year-old boy walked into his Missouri school last week, wearing a trench
coat and a mask and armed with an assault rifle, he was "confronted" by a
school administrator.
Apparently, they chatted a bit, but the administrator was no arms-control
negotiator. The kid fired a shot into the ceiling and was prepared to keep
firing, but the gun jammed.
All is well in Joplin, Mo.; the cops eventually grabbed the kid and no one
was hurt. But what would have happened if the gun hadn't jammed? Maybe the
story would be more reassuring if the school administrator spotted the boy
with the rifle, told him to drop the rifle; the boy refused - and the school
executive pulled out a revolver and shot the kid in the head.
If schools are going to declare themselves gun-free zones, then we can
expect more horrible catastrophes, such as the Amish school case in
Pennsylvania, where a fellow was apparently free to enter the school, shoot
11 girls - and then shoot himself.
The predictable response to such stuff is, as The Courant's editorial page
recommended, "tougher gun laws." If only the bad guys and the crazy were
disarmed, then we could continue to leave the school doors open, protected
by a school staff armed with heavy volumes of Shakespeare. Somehow, that
isn't completely reassuring.
While the idea is unlikely to fly at the local PTA meeting, it's probably
time to grow up and place a revolver or two in some school desk drawers,
with trained people authorized to whip them out and shoot the crazy person
who's walking through the building killing people.
The notion that we are going to fortify every single school building with
metal detectors and armed guards and snarling dogs and locked doors is, on
the face of it, unlikely. The Wyoming Tribune-Eagle newspaper recently sent
employees roaming through 12 schools in Laramie County to see what would
happen. At two schools, no one ever approached them. At seven schools, the
strangers were free to walk around unquestioned for from two to 20 minutes.
If at the end of the day we do little more than announce to the crazy people
that we are open for business as usual, then it is only a matter of time
before someone dangerous takes us up on the offer.
The National School Safety Center, for instance, offers up all sorts of
earnest, toothless ideas to make schools safer, including, of course, making
"sure local law enforcement is part of the crisis response and knows its
roles."
Well, if the crazy person is inside the school building killing people; and
no one on the school staff has a weapon; and the "local law enforcement" is
outside with its nose pressed up against the glass; then its role is limited
and perhaps too late.
It was the controversial and unfashionable think tank and academic scholar
John Lott who released a study in the late 1990s and later, a book,
suggesting that criminals respond to the "cost" of what they do, just like
the rest of us. If the bad guys think the mean assistant principal and a few
gym teachers are packing heat, perhaps the potential killers would be
somewhat less likely to roam the school halls, shooting people for sport.
As Lott argued in his book, "More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and
Gun Control Laws," if more innocent non-criminals carried guns, crime would
go down - and, one supposes, crazy people in school buildings would be
killed or deterred from a potential massacre.
To be sure, we would prefer to hold conferences on school crime, or install
really cool security cameras, rather than imagine the fourth-grade teacher
packing heat - just in case.
But as a suburban Houston school security chief told USA Today last week:
"If somebody's really determined to get into a school and they have a high
enough caliber weapon, they're going to get in."
At that point, a stern talking to may not do the trick. Someone should have
a gun. Schools are communities of vulnerable folks. If we're going to stick
them in an open building, we have an obligation to protect them by means
more formidable than a sign-in sheet in the principal's office.
Laurence D. Cohen is a public policy consultant who served as special
assistant to former Gov. John G. Rowland. His column appears every Friday.
He can be reached at cohencolumn@aol.com.
http://web.archive.org/web/20061107233206/http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/columnists/hc-cohen1020.artoct20,0,1949116.column?coll=hc-utility-opinion
